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Our next exhibition is right around the corner! This one will celebrate all things cold, frozen, and snowy. Opening on December 20th until March 26th, Ice and Snow will feature material from Cotsen Children’s Library with wintry scenes that celebrate the season.

Advertising for our show is provided by non other than Fall and Winter themselves. The above images have been blown up and displayed in the exhibition cases in preparation for the exhibition:

These images have also been sourced from the collection. The original prints were created by the Czech illustrator Helena Zmatlíková [Praha : Odeon, c1968] entitled, in both Czech and French, Podzim : L’Automne and Zima : L’Hiver (respectively).

Now measuring 54 X 55 inches, old man Fall and old lady Winter have come a long way since they were found as prints pasted on 12 x 15 inch drywall panels:

Cotsen 40757

Cotsen 151645

So come see Podzim and Zima before they are taken down to reveal the real surprise. Join us in the Cotsen Children’s Library from 9-5 on weekdays and 12-5 on weekends starting December 20th for a celebration of Winter!

Special thanks to Squirrel Walsh, RBSC Imaging Services Coordinator for the excellent digitization of the original items (and many more!), and to Princeton University Print and Mail Services for the awesome job (that they always do) making our collections larger than life and entertaining my unorthodox print requests. . .

Cotsen’s Soviet-era children’s book collection is well known, extensive, and portions even digitally available. Less well known is that our Russian-language material covers an even wider historical range from the 17th century to the present day. We have over 250 titles printed in Russia before the Revolution, and around 60 titles printed in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

From the title page, the discerning reading might (or might not) notice that this bukvar (a shared Eastern European word for a grammatical primer) is not actually in Russian. This book is in Church Slavonic, the liturgical language of the the Orthodox Church. Unfortunately, my Church Slavonic is a little too rusty for me to discuss the contents of the book other than the obvious matter of it’s being an introduction to the Slavonic alphabet, basic words, and grammatical training. Lucky for us, however, Cotsen has two splendidly different copies of this affectionately known: Azbuka (alphabet book):

Copy 2 is the more complete of the two editions (for reasons explained more below). Though the binding is in arguably rougher shape (except for the the extant clasps), the paper quality is much higher, a hand colored frontispiece is included (pictured above), and the colophon information is more extensive. In fact, the date for this item was obtained from the colophon (Printer’s information typically found at the back of books printed before the end of the 17th Century). The colophon states that the book was printed in twenty fourth year of reign of the first Romanov Czar, Mikhail Fedorovich (elected 1613). As seen in the title page above, this edition is printed in black and red, with red used for initials and important words:

Unnumbered spread (9539 copy 2)

Unnumbered page (9539 copy 2)

Speculatively, I would venture to say that copy 1 might be a later edition (alas, if only my Church Slavonic was better). Though it is worse for ware, the paper quality is lower, and it does not feature red ink at all. This relative lack of quality might indicate that the publisher endured less cost while producing a later edition for a book that was already in circulation (though, sometimes it proves to be the exact opposite since the popularity of earlier editions can lead to a less capital conscience publisher). It is, however, typographically unique and very different from copy 2 pictured above:

Unnumbered spread with initials (9539 copy 1)

Copy 1’s most unique features, however, are one of a kind. Not only is this copy extensively annotated:

Unnumbered spread with annotations (9539 copy 1)

But it lacks around a dozen pages from the original printing. Lucky for us, a contemporary owner (probably the binder who did such a superb job) was kind enough to diligently copy out these missing pages in manuscript:

Manuscript title page (9539 copy 1)

Not only that, but copy 1 has a very special hidden bonus. The waste paper used to line the inside front board of the binding is a manuscript leaf (complete with red ink!):